


Stuck in the Middle with You

by Lavendermagik



Series: Stuck in the Middle [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 18:16:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20030212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavendermagik/pseuds/Lavendermagik
Summary: A wordy summary of your tumultuous acquaintance with a Norse god.





	Stuck in the Middle with You

The first time he saw you was over his failure to raise Mjolnir. It was admittedly a poor time for a first meeting. The cursed hammer refused to budge, refused to acknowledge him as worthy despite Thor's fall from grace. He released the handle and glanced up to see a woman staring at him from one of the raised platforms surrounding the mysterious object these humans were struggling to identify. But no, she couldn’t be looking at him – he was hidden from all sight, let alone that of something as unremarkable as a mere mortal. No, her gaze was on Mjolnir, probably as frustrated with her primitive comprehension of the universe as the rest of her colleagues. Which was why Loki was understandably flabbergasted when your eyes jumped from the hammer to his own, as if you could see him perfectly clearly, as if you'd bore witness to his failure and were curious as to what he would do next.

The first time you saw him was through the window to the strange, unnecessarily muscular, Norse-god-of-a-man's holding room. You were caught off guard – you didn’t recognize this new man, and you were familiar with all the agents assigned to this case. Not to mention his hair style was definitely not S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation for field work. You couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was seemed to upset his larger counterpart. Agent Coulson's appearance startled you. He gave you a courteous nod as he reached for the door handle, and you found it odd that he made no mention of the unauthorized guest. Then you realized that the man had disappeared as if he’d never been, except for the now distraught countenance of the room's original occupant.

Peripherally, you caught sight of something dark whisper around the corner, past an agent who didn’t even look up from his tablet. Without thinking you followed, and he led you to the center of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s impromptu base where the 0-8-4 still resided immovable. You were the sole observer as he grasped the hammer's handle and tried to lift it – none of the other bodies which continually milled around took any notice. If you'd been any kind of normal person you might have begun to consider the state of your sanity, since you seemed to be seeing things no one else saw. But this man was far more interesting than being normal, so you forewent your own mental state in favor of seeing if he could accomplish what no other had.

He could not.

You looked at his face to see his reaction only to find he appeared to be looking back at you. The slightest narrowing of his eyes spoke to probable surprise, which led you to conclude that he didn't expect to be seen. He must have been masking his presence on purpose. Why you could see through it was a question for another day, apparently, because the next moment he vanished. A quick visual sweep showed he had either left completely or adjusted his veil to compensate for your unexpected perceptiveness. You didn’t have time to ponder, however, because the base soon became more harried and you had actual work to do.

You didn’t mention the dark ghost to anyone else. You did have a certain amount of self-preservation instinct.

The second time you met he was in the midst of global takeover and you’d just been kidnapped by one of your oldest friends. Clint Barton was the first agent Coulson had introduced you to, the first you'd convinced to let you build his weapons. You were particularly young to be a weapon's technician for the world's top secret spy organization and wholly untested. When Phil had brought the archer to your lab he hadn’t been terribly enthusiastic about letting such a neophyte anywhere near his most treasured possessions. But you were stubborn and confident, so you made him a bet. The next day when you managed to match him bullseye for bullseye with the bow and arrows you’d crafted in sixteen-hours' time he'd relented, and you became the only weapons tech he'd allow to work on his gear.

Which meant when he needed to stock up to serve his master's world domination scheme, he had come after you. In hindsight you knew you should have found it suspicious that he was waiting in your apartment, wearing sunglasses indoors. But he was Clint, so you put your gun down on the sideboard and asked him if something had gone wrong with the tesseract like you'd predicted, like you’d warned Director Fury, like you'd been suspended over for so vehemently opposing in such a verbal manner. Your answer has been a brief struggle in which you were sorely outmatched and a trip to an unknown location where you were presented to the same dark man you'd followed back in New Mexico.

This time he didn’t seem surprised to see you. You supposed if he had a finger swirling around in Clint's brain he’d probably run across you once or twice. You made the required token attempts at refusal when the man (Loki, honest to God/gods) demanded you create whatever Agent Barton required. But he had total power over your friend, could make him do things to himself, do things to you that you know the beloved archer would regret when he got his mind back. So when Clint gave you a list of what arrows he wanted, you’d returned a list of what materials you would need.

You made him his arrows. Loki disappeared for a while. You watched Dr. Selvig work on his intergalactic portal and mutter gleefully about wonders only he could see. You allowed Clint to drag you aboard an aircraft only to watch him gun down the Helicarrier you'd helped design. Then Loki was back and Clint was gone and you felt alone and angry and you called Loki a coward and a failure, among other things. He'd stabbed you between the ribs, intentionally missing everything vital and then slowing the blood flow leaving the wound with his magic or whatever he did. He didn’t want you to die before you saw his plan come to fruition. Every megalomaniac needs an audience. 

He left you on the roof with Selvig, either to give you a front row seat or because he was too irritated to tolerate your presence anymore. You slouched against the wall, the gravel on the roof cutting into your skin. Your hand was red and sticky where it pressed into your side and the sun was too bright after being kept in the dark for so long. You'd struggled to your feet when Tony flew up, tried to warn him about the device's forcefield, but only got blown off the side of the building for your troubles. Tony caught you, which was preferable to the alternative but also freakin' hurt because the man was encased in _metal_.

He didn’t have time to get you somewhere safe, so he’d done his best to stay between you and Loki as they bantered, led you behind the bar and told you to be ready to duck. Everything after that was chaos. You mostly stayed out of the way when Loki fought with Thor, though the unnecessarily muscular, _literal_ Norse-god-of-a-man didn’t help when he called attention to you by demanding your release. The gesture was thoughtful if shortsighted. Who's to say that Loki wouldn’t have thought to use you as a human shield as he whizzed around on the weird alien flying jet ski even without the reminder?

You couldn’t really explain how you picked out Clint in all the madness, but when you saw him take aim you didn’t hesitate to take your leave of the alien jet ski. Falling completely untethered through the air is an almost liberating feeling if you can find some way to still force air into your lungs. Getting caught midfall always looks romantic and reassuring, but having it happen for the second time in the span of an hour gave you pretty solid grounds on which to form a realistic opinion. Getting caught midfall _hurts_ considering the force produced upon impact after the rate of speed a falling body reaches. This is exacerbated when the catcher is also mobile, in this case swinging through the air like an urban Tarzan, and the caught has previous injuries from the first fall and being stabbed.

Crashing through a window and rolling in glass is no fun either. So when Clint asked around his own harsh breathing from his prone position next to you if you were okay, you would have laughed yourself silly except that your diaphragm would not get on board.

Tony flew a nuclear missile into a space hole, despite you yelling into the earpiece you'd stolen from Clint that his suit was not designed with intergalactic travel in mind. Miraculously, he lived so you could yell at him later for being a heroic moron and discuss design modifications in case he ever needed to attempt space travel again. The team reassembled in Tony’s destroyed tower, and Loki asked for a drink. You made and presented it to him. He asked why. You told him because Tony already offered. Besides, whatever would be waiting for him wasn't going to be a picnic, and you weren't one to deny a man's final request. 

One thing you always wondered through all of this was why he didn’t turn you the way he had Clint and Dr. Selvig. It certainly would have made you more cooperative, lessened the need for threats and physical coercion. Initially you thought it just to be casual cruelty, that letting you remain fully conscious gave him a more attentive and reactive audience. But then you heard him tell Thor that if his magic was to be restrained you would need to be given medical assistance immediately. Thor took this to be just another empty threat until Loki was cuffed and muzzled, and you collapsed where you stood talking to Steve.

You'd almost forgotten the hole in your side. You were unconscious for a day and then bedridden for another couple after that, blood loss and trauma and all. Still, you lived through what could have been a final blow from the failed conqueror of Midgard. Loki had struggled enough to bring attention to the situation in time for your life to be preserved. The juxtaposition was jarring, and you weren’t sure how to feel. But you were in a S.H.I.E.L.D. medical facility when Loki returned to Asgard with Thor to face his father's punishment, so in the end it didn’t matter one way or the other how you felt.

Except it did.

You were out of bed but awaiting clearance to return to work, if you even wanted to return to S.H.I.E.L.D. after Fury had so royally screwed you over, even if under the tesseract's influence, when Thor unexpectedly appeared at your door. Loki was to go on trial before the Allfather and Thor wanted you to testify on behalf of all of Midgard. You laughed. He didn't. Why you? Surely one of the others would be a better choice, more knowledgeable, more respected. No, you had been with Loki without the influence of mind control longer than anyone else. Your connection with the war criminal was unique, and in Thor's opinion, best suited for trial.

You understood what he was saying. You also understood what he was not saying – that you were the only person to show his brother kindness, and he hoped your testimony would be for leniency where all others called for the harshest of punishments. The idea was preposterous. You'd been fully conscious for each and every unspeakable cruelty. Loki had harassed, belittled, and stabbed you. He'd almost killed two of your favorite people. He sicced Clint on you, and that by itself was unforgivable because the man had not been to see you since, and you were sure he felt too weighed down by guilt to make any attempt. You didn’t want to help Loki and you certainly didn’t want to go near him ever again. Besides, you had a lot going on – the question of your return to work, figuring out how to make up with Clint, teaching Steve about emojis…

Then Thor had mentioned Asgard's weapon stores, and you remembered the giant laser monster Thor had fought in New Mexico that you'd later studied and modeled a large gun after, a gun you'd been told Agent Coulson had used right before his temporary death. And then, you were in Asgard with a promise of unlimited access for as long as you wanted.

The third time you and Loki met he was in chains standing before the Allfather. You managed to surprise him with your presence, and tenfold more when you said that while Loki's crimes against your people were inexcusable, you believed he had been under the influence of outside sources and was undeserving of death. Odin asked from whence this mercy came. You replied that it wasn’t mercy, but simply justice, at least in your opinion, when one took into consideration all extenuating circumstances. Loki might have imagined it, but the way you said extenuating circumstances sounded almost accusatory, as if you laid partial blame on Odin himself. Unlikely, of course, because how could you have discerned the rip in his soul caused by Odin's abysmal parenting style?

Besides, you continued to say, Loki would suffer far more being locked up and unable to cause trouble than if he were merely killed.

Odin was obviously not pleased with your interference, for as it turns out Thor had sought you of his own volition. The Allfather would have been perfectly content to dispense judgment without any input of the people Loki had wronged. But Odin was wise, and he could see that both his wife and son were in line with this lone mortal.

Also, he was inclined to agree with your assessment of Loki suffering more in imprisonment. 

Loki didn’t get a chance to speak with you as he was hustled away to his cell, though there was a moment of what could be termed ‘meaningful eye contact’. Eye contact that whispered _I don’t understand you_ and _I don’t understand you either_. You didn't come see him in his imprisonment, not that he expected that of you. No one came to visit him aside from his queen mother, and all that amounted to was his being callous to her up until she died. The one being in all the worlds who truly saw him, and his last words to her were the cruelest he could imagine.

No, he didn’t see you again until Thor came to fetch him for his haphazard escape plan. There you stood in what he assumed was Midgardian battle clothes with an unfamiliar gun at your hip. You regarded him coolly until Thor's mortal love interest slapped him across the face. Then you snickered quietly and seemed to thaw, as if that were enough retribution to even the scales in whatever imaginary balance hung between the two of you.

You fought well for what he'd initially taken to be a simple Midgardian scientist. The gun you carried appeared to be immeasurably versatile, first firing in one manner and then another. It could do as little as simply stun an enemy or as much as blow a hole in solid stone. The shape itself could even change depending on what the situation called for. He wished he could ask about it, understand what kind of magic you'd instilled in the small weapon (and perhaps think up countermeasures should it ever be turned on him), but there was neither time nor leeway in his pride for such exchanges. 

Thor didn’t know how to pilot a ship, that much was clear, and he was unwilling to free Loki for the task. Impatient, you pushed past Thor and asked Loki how the controls worked. He only needed to speak a few sentences before you were flying as if born to the task, dodging buildings and enemy fire with equal ease, frustrating the plans of the many pursuers you soon accrued. Thor covered his injured pride by going to check on his Jane Foster, who was looking increasingly ill, leaving Loki alone with you for the first time since he'd left Midgard. Now the question was what does one say to a woman one kidnapped and nearly killed?

Not much, actually. You were in no mood to banter and needed to focus on piloting despite your obvious knack. Mostly he was to give directions. Still, he did manage to ask why you had stood up to Odin for him.

You hadn’t stood up for him. You'd only said what you thought to be the truth.

You weren't looking at him, so he provoked further. What did you think the truth to be, silly little mortal that you were?

Now you did meet his gaze and held it. He was not as black and white as he wanted everyone to believe, and death was far to simple a punishment for a situation so complex and layered.

It was a nice sentiment, even if it was wrong. You could claim understanding of his character, but you could never truly own to it. You saw what you wanted, just like everyone else. Loki, God of mischief and illusions, was not to be so easily understood by a simple mortal. 

His musings were cut short when you casually gave up the controls and jumped out the door of the ship. He was too shocked by the sudden turn of events to notice Thor until his brother had unceremoniously shoved him out the same door. Your smile when he landed in the second, smaller ship was far too smug, and the combination of Fandral’s matching derision was almost too much to bear. He recovered as swiftly as he knew how, and took over the mantle of pilot. When Fandral kissed your hand in farewell, Loki realized how irritating he'd always found the pretty man's flirtatious nature. At least you seemed unaffected, bidding him adieu with nothing more than a friendly wish of good luck.

He was disappointed when he flew straight at a cliff face and you didn’t flinch, even as Thor’s own anxiety became more and more apparent. He was further disappointed when you didn’t mourn his heroic death. You had fought the dark elves back to back, he protecting you as often as you protected him – one would think that such partnership under trial would have earned him some display of emotion. Yet you simply stood by, holding on to Jane Foster as Thor raged over him. Right before the end he snuck a glance at you and your eyes met with the ever-more-familiar magnetic click. And in your eyes he saw full comprehension of his trickery. You knew that he lived still, yet you said nothing. Perhaps you wanted to allow Thor the comfort of his brother dying admirably in the service of the greater good. Perhaps you were waiting, biding your time only to reveal his treachery at a later moment. Or perhaps you had another reason entirely. He would not know, because your paths were unlikely to cross again.

The fourth time you met Loki was in the New York Sanctum presided over by Dr. Stephen Strange. You'd sought the man out after some strange goings on that no one but you seemed to remember. You'd left a card should he ever need to reach you, and lo and behold he'd called you up to let you know a couple of your Asgardian pals were in town.

Read ‘called you up' as ‘transported you to the Sanctum without notice'.

He asked if you knew why Loki had returned to earth, if he was planning to threaten the planet again. You, of course, had no idea, so Strange brought Thor in for a round of questioning. Turns out he'd just misplaced his father, which was a problem easily remedied. When Loki was also produced he was too infuriated at having been forgotten for so long that he didn’t have room left to be surprised at your presence. 

Little time was given for small talk before all Hel broke loose (pun very much intended, thank you). The projectile Hela threw as they rode the Bifrost towards Asgard would have gone right through your collar bone if Loki hadn’t pulled your body to his as he twisted so it glanced off his shoulder, throwing the both of you away from the rainbow bridge and into the trash heaps of Sakaar. He'd heard of this planet of lost things, and so you allowed him to lead you around as stealthily as possible. Through contrivances you couldn’t even begin to imagine, he managed to ingratiate himself with the Grandmaster, who seemed to take a particular interest in you from the start. Then Loki introduced you as his wife, and you almost visibly balked.

“You can be my wife or you can be his,” he said through teeth clenched in a smile.

You'd decided wife of Loki to be a safer option for the moment.

And so you'd spent a week sharing a small apartment space with the man, who let’s say it one more time had once tried to kill you. It was the strangest existence for you in a life comprised of strange existences. You'd spend days out socializing as a couple, smiling until your face felt worn and bruised, and then you’d return home and spend quiet evenings together. A few times he’d even read to you until you fell asleep. Aside from the always present underlying current of your shared past and the fact that you were both, in essence, still pretty much strangers, the arrangement was almost pleasant. The space only had one bed, so you took the couch, which was surprisingly comfortable. Chivalry would have dictated that he allow you the bed, but after all he was an alien and a prince and a war criminal, so he didn’t necessarily play by the rules. He did point out that the bed was more than big enough for two, throwing in a randy grin. You'd simply said no thank you and decided this would be the opportune time to clean your gun.

He assured you that he was doing everything in his power to find a way off the planet, but as the week passed and no progress appeared to have been made, you began to wonder. And with his reaction to Thor's appearance, you began to question whether he had any intention of leaving at all. He didn’t want to try to break Thor out of prison. He didn’t want to speak to The Grandmaster on his brother's behalf. He only showed real exuberance for the idea of leaving at the Contest of Champions, and that was just to get away from his old pal Hulk.

You'd finally asked him about it, right before Thor betrayed Loki's betrayal and took you with him in his stolen ship. Loki offered no explanation beyond asking if the last week had been truly so bad. You'd both been honored guests of the Grandmaster. You'd lived well and easy. There was no fighting, no judgment, nothing to worry about. Was it really so wrong to want to keep that?

You knew what he meant. What he meant was there was no remnant of his past. No one knew him as Loki the trickster, Loki the weaker imposter son of Odin, Loki the failed would-be-conqueror of two realms. There was no inescapable shadow cast by his bigger, stronger, better-loved brother. You understood that he'd finally found a place where he could succeed and feel good about himself. You could allow him that. What you couldn’t allow was that he'd trapped you there with him, made you a part of his success, and in turn left the rest of the realms to the havoc Hela was sure to have enacted by now.

The picturesque life he'd just described wasn’t real, you told him. None of this had been real. The worlds were going to Hela (second pun also intended, thank you) and he'd decided to live in a fantasy and forced you to do the same. He was being a coward again, and you wanted no part of that.

Your turn for surprise came when Loki showed up in Asgard with a ship of former Sakaaran prisoners. He saw it in your eyes as you stood next to his half-blind brother. For all the times you'd seen through his lies and tricks, he'd finally done something you hadn’t expected, which was both satisfying and also insulting.

Still, the surprise waned and you actually smiled at him, as a person does to another they are truly happy to see. He fought not to return the smile with the same sincerity, because he could sense that you were somehow proud of him and he must reject that sentiment. He didn’t need your approval.

He did need something from you, however, though he didn’t realize until it was almost too late. Many things happened at once. A plan to bring on Ragnarok was agreed upon, and he turned to enact his part. Hela ran a spike through the fleeing spaceship, halting its escape. He saw you aiming your fantastical gun at the spire holding fast to the ship. Then he saw another dark, twisted spike shoot through the ground and through your shoulder, causing you to drop your weapon and cry out in pain.

Surtur's crown was all but forgotten, and he ran to your side. The spike had been thin and broken off leaving you collapsed on the ground holding your bloody shoulder. He spoke words without thought or memory of them later. He made to lift you up, get you away, at least to the ship where there was some shelter, but your hand on his arm stopped him. You wanted him to wait, just for a moment. Your eyes were trained over the edge of the rainbow bridge where he realized your gun must have fallen. Were you so concerned with your artillery at a time like this? 

Then a great blast rocked everything, and he saw the spire holding the ship begin the crumble. You now turned to him with a smile. You didn’t explain, so he couldn’t be sure, but he thought that your gun must have detonated somehow and destroyed the spike's foundation. He wasted no more time, lifting you up as you grunted at the stress on your injury. He left you on the ship in the care of some Asgardians and would have returned to his mission, but your hand once again held him. 

“Be careful,” was all you said.

He lifted your hand from his arm and squeezed it briefly, thought about kissing it and then didn’t because he was still surrounded by Asgardians and Sakaraan gladiators, and also he wasn’t Fandral.

Then he went and set off the end of the world.

He found you later, lying in a dark room, for all appearances asleep. He sought you out second only to his own brother. He needed to know that you were safe, that the healers had done their due diligence. Because, somehow, in the span of meetings and surprises and anger and threats and companionship and an unheard of amount of honesty on his part, you had come to belong to him and no harm could come to what little he called his.

You weren’t asleep, or perhaps you had been and awoke when you felt his presence. Because you always seemed to know he was there. You seemed to know if he was there or if he was plotting or if he wasn’t being truthful, as if none of his tricks or lies could ever work on you, and this was both endearing and fascinating and terrifying by turn.

You were glad he was alive – how novel. He asked after your shoulder, and you shifted it almost experimentally, rustling the makeshift sling that held up your arm. It was pretty good all things considered. You went to stand up and he tried to stop you, hands pushing at the air as if the gesture itself could hold you back. You laughed and stood anyway, assuring him you really were fine, and now that he was back, you should all go find Thor and decide what the next plan would be.

You were steps in front of him, and then level with him, but before you could move past his arm shot out until it crossed your body so his hand could catch your hip. He pulled and stepped to the side until you faced him squarely, his free hand went to your cheek for targeting purposes, and then he kissed you full on the mouth. You didn’t react, which wasn’t wholly unexpected, and he released the kiss quickly, pulling back so he could see your face in its entirety. You were staring at him almost blankly, and so to distract himself he watched his hand move from your cheek to brush some hair back from your forehead.

You finally asked why he did that. He said it seemed inevitable. Did you not think so? You said it was hard to say. He asked if you wanted him to apologize. You paused. You said no. He asked if you would slap him should he attempt to kiss you again. You said you hadn't decided yet. And then you both went to go find Thor.

An ambiguous conclusion to be sure, but you seemed in no mood to provide clarity. 

The last time you saw Loki before the world really did end was right before you were shot back to earth with the Hulk. He'd tried to send you with the Valkyrie and the others as they fled, but you'd foolishly refused to go until it was too late. So he hid you from Thanos and his minions, hand wrapped tightly around your wrist holding you behind him, pushing forth as much magic as possible to keep you cloaked and invisible. This was the only way he could be absolutely sure you would not be found, as he watched the rest of the ship's passengers be slaughtered. You'd tried to argue that you would fight, that you couldn’t just hide while everyone else died, just as you couldn't take up space in the escape pod while leaving everyone else behind. But your gun was lost and your arm was useless. He'd held you fast, only to let go at the very end, when the Hulk was defeated and Loki was forced to relinquish his grip on you. 

You met his eyes one last time before Heimdall opened the Bifrost. For once he could see all your emotions plainly across your face – terror, horror, hopelessness, regret. He wanted to give you some kind of reassurance, but he had none, and then you were gone. Loki watched you disappear with relief and trepidation. He'd have to leave it up to those fools on earth to protect you now.

Because he finally fully realized what he needed from you. He needed you to live. He needed you to exist in the world, anywhere, as long as you were alive and doing the things you always did. Even if he'd never see you again, as long as you were somewhere he would accept whatever else fate had for him.

And so he turned to face Thanos and his minions, preparing one final trick. You were safe for one more day. This would be enough.


End file.
